Men more likely to kill themselves than women

Monday

Aug 30, 2010 at 12:01 AMAug 30, 2010 at 9:53 AM

Amy Neff Roth

Men commit suicide nearly four times more often than women, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Unlike women, older men are the most likely to commit suicide with the highest rates among those age 85 and older.
Yet women are more likely to suffer from mood disorders and attempt suicide two or three times as often as men. Men are more likely to succeed at suicide, though.
“The thing with guys is guys are less likely to talk about killing themselves and when they do it, they’re likely to use something that’s pretty lethal,” explained Doug Goldschmidt, director of the Neighborhood Center’s Mobile Crisis Assessment Team and the Utica center’s clinical director.
Here are some facts about men and suicide from the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System in 2007, which uses data from 16 states:
• The male suicide rate is 18.4 per 100,000-plus, compared to 5.0 for women.
• The suicide rate for men ages 85 and older was 43.9, compared to 15.3 for women, and 35.8 for men ages 75 to 84, compared to 16.4 for women.
• Men ages 45 to 54 had the third highest suicide rate at 26.5. That age group has the highest suicide rate for women, 9.0, and the highest overall rate.
• Firearms account for 56 percent of male suicides, followed by hanging/strangulation/suffocation, which account for 24.4 percent. That compares to 31.9 percent and 18.5 percent for women.
• Poisoning (which includes drug overdoses) is the leading method of suicide for women, causing 40.8 percent of suicides, but only the third leading cause for men, at 12.7 percent.
• American Indians and Alaskan native men are the
Continued from previous page
most likely to commit suicide, with a rate of 29.5; and suicide is the second leading cause of death among ages 15 to 34 for these two groups. The rate for white, non-Hispanic men is 22.1.
• Other ethnic groups are considerably less likely to commit suicide with rates for male suicide ranging from 1.2 for Asians and Pacific Islanders to 5.5 for Hispanics.
Why do so many older white men commit suicide?
Goldschmidt said they just don’t seem to handle aging as well as women.
“These are people who are really left alone, and they don’t cope well ... Women do very well with widowhood, but men don’t. They just don’t tend to have that level of coping skill,” he said.
As for middle-age men, it’s not clear why they’re the next most likely age group to commit suicide, Goldschmidt said. There is some speculation that it has to do with the economy, not so much the immediate loss of jobs, investments or homes, but in the long-term uncertainty of the economic situation, he said.
“My own sense is that for the middle class and middle aged in certain sectors of this economy, (the situation) must be very, very upsetting because you can’t see where the opportunities are going to be,” Goldschmidt said.
He also theorized, stressing that it’s just his opinion, that certain ethnic groups might be less likely to commit suicide than whites because they have better family support structures.
The National Institutes of Health lists age, unemployment, social isolation, chronic illness, certain occupations such as farming and a family history of suicide or violence as suicide risk factors for men.

Mobile Crisis Assessment Team’s local hotline number is 732-MCAT or 732-6228; calls are accepted 24 hours a day.